Ridiculous releases and stern words

Meredith Burgmann was, until recently, the president of the NSW Legislative Council. She recently retired.

Meredith Burgmann, collector of political idiocy

While in her position, she enjoyed a sideline hobby collecting the headlines from politicians’ press releases. It turns out to have been a highly entertaining hobby and she sent a list of her favourites to the Sydney Morning Herald:

Macdonald’s cuts paperwork required for sheep movements

Pensioners take to the bus as pet sales soar in outer metro regions

Three bus Barry exposed on public transport (again)

Campbell humiliated by parrot

Strike backyard breeders off your Christmas list

Dogs, goats, alpacas, leeches: threats to our meter readers

Stoner ignorant on ethanol: Martin

Minister launches Australia’s biggest obesity trial

Tips for toddlers adjusting to end of daylight saving

Self-milking cows – a dairy farmer’s dream

And my personal favourite:

Is this the end of parmesan cheese?

Is it? By the gods, no! I’d better get hold of that press release and see if my parmesan cheese enjoying days are numbered.

On the subject of political ramblings, and in the most tenuous segue to date, there’s a lot of hubbub about climate change here at the moment. Obviously, that’s a good thing. It would be nice if we left a habitable planet for our children. Or we could at least concentrate on building them rockets so they could go and find another one as soon as possible.

A lot of the current dialogue centres around a review by Sir Nicholas Stern, explaining how ignoring climate change would be a far greater economic disaster than tackling it. He’s talking the language of politics, at least, putting a dollar value on all possible outcomes. But to me, the best thing about this is that it’s called The Stern Review.